


Show Your Teeth

by Louffox



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Everyone will appear eventually, F/F, F/M, Fae AU, Grizzop has a savage sense of justice, Hamid is just as posh as ever, High Strangeness, Hunting, Justice, M/M, Multi, Other, There's a polycule, and Wilde is not himself, fairytale AU, no beta we die like men, vengeance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29185779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: You don't get what you deserve. You don't earn what you get. Teeth are weapons, but bared become a smile.Grizzop is the Royal Hunter of the Racket kingdom. His world isn't just and would be better off with some and without others. Given a chance at power, he'll take matters into his own hands and make things right.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	1. First: The Fool

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't attempted a longfic in SO LONG. pray to your gods for me. I've been doing alright at keeping up with this and have a small backlog of chapters, but I am notorious to myself for doing terrible. Yall are going to have to hold me accountable. But I have an OUTLINE.
> 
> Rating is currently M for swearing and themes of violence and etc, but could eventually change to E. I haven't decided yet.

**First: The Fool**

“You’re holding it wrong.”

Grizzop grabs the apprentice’s elbow and lifts it up, grabs their fingers to move them. They are stiff and don’t want to move, and Grizzop jabs them in the low back to distract them and make them stand up straight.

“One above, two below.”

“There’s another way I remember it,” Carter says, leaning over conspiratorially, teeth showing under his sparse mustache. Grizzop turns away and moves onto the next apprentice as Carter explains his particular trick of memory to the apprentice, who blushes all the way to the tips of their ears.

Grizzop nods at the next apprentice, and the next. He whistles for them to fire at the targets, and all strike acceptably close to the center.

“Good. Again.” They draw new arrows and begin to nock, but he whistles again. Two stop and look at him, the third- the one Carter had been explaining his lewd memory trick to- panics and fires again, the arrow going wide as he’d barely even drawn the string.

“Again.”

The first two hurry to nock, realizing the score, and Grizzop whistles.

He whistles again.

Again.

And then calls out for them to stop.

“The targets should have five arrows in them,” he says. They look at the targets. One has three, one has two, and the last has three plus the one stuck in the ground.

“It’s not enough to be accurate. You need to be fast.”

They drill all day, until two of the apprentice’s fingers are bleeding. He calls for them to stop and has the third continue until his fingers bleed as well, and then has them do sprints. He can see them looking worried about tomorrow, knowing that their torn fingers will not only be just as painful tomorrow, but will probably make them less accurate and slower. He lets them worry about that and compare wounds for a bit, before calling for them to follow.

He takes them not to dinner, but straight to Azu. He expects a lot from them, but he isn’t cruel. He knows the calluses will come in time, and making them suffer won’t make them any more skillful.

The first, who’s form had been the worst and who’s name Grizzop had already forgotten, looks at him with surprise when they realize they’ve been taken to a healer.

“I’m not here to make you comfortable. But I’m not here to torture you, either. Azu will heal you, then on ahead to dinner. You can have free time after that.” He knows free time is important to them, and they need time to bond with each other. He can already see the grueling day has started to establish a kinship and an awareness of each other. Good.

Grizzop leaves them with Azu, who gave him a quick hug, allowing him to take the letter she slipped him and put it in his pocket, and then goes to see the queen.

Sasha is on the roof of the kitchen, munching something that looks like smoked ham. He accepts her offered piece and scrapes at some bird shit on the chimney with an arrow.

“That’ll dull your arrows.”

“What, are you gonna cut my arrow budget?”

“No. Don’t think I could- it’s already tight. Yet you always bring back your game. The maths for you is dead simple- one arrow always means one hunt.”

“Dunno why you’d need more,” Grizzop says, prideful. The pride is well earned- he’s put in all the blood and sweat to get to this point. No tears, though. Never tears. Useless waste of water. And the taste of salt makes him remember drowning.

“Do you. Er. Did. Is there, uh…. did she-”

Grizzop hands Sasha the letter, and watches her open it eagerly.

His heart feels like it swells in his chest as he watches his queen happily kick her feet on the edge of the dirty roof, mouth pursed and shiny from the ham grease as she reads the letter from her lover with bright, eager eyes. This is right. He is where he belongs. This is the perfect kingdom for him, the perfect queen for him, the perfect job for him.

So what is it that he feels the swell of desire for? Everything he could want is here.

He stops by the witch’s quarters in the dungeon on his way to his cabin, delivering the letter Sasha gave him, prepares himself a simple dinner of fish and potatoes, and decides to sleep in the hammock he keeps out back, under the stars, for warm nights like this.

He dreams of holding his bow and it feels wrong in his hands, and wakes frustrated with himself and uncertain why.

It rains for three days and he continues to drill the apprentices, doing his best to ignore Carter and to get them into shape. He won’t admit that he and Carter do well training apprentices together, even if someone was to hold a sword to his throat. His approach is cold, demanding perfection until they achieve it, treating them like something to be shaped. He points out every mistake and flaw, not unkindly, but with the expectation for them to fix it and grow. And Carter is good at encouraging growth, laughing and teasing, softening Grizzop’s commentary. When they complete their training and are assigned to a town, Carter will ensure they are placed somewhere that fits their personalities, that they’ll get along with the hunters they will shadow and eventually replace. Grizzop will ensure they are efficient and skillful and successful at their hunts.

When the rain abates, Grizzop leaves them and goes into the woods. He still has his duties of hunting for the castle. His quiver holds a single arrow and his eyes hold a dare for anyone to say something about it.

The air is still, keeping his scent from wafting where he doesn’t want it, and he’s able to match the silence of the windless woods. The rain left the world a vicious shade of green, the ground soft and full of tracks.

He selects the deepest cloven prints he can find and begins the stalk. Finds it cross paths with some still deeper, and considers. To abandon his current tracking and change direction, or to follow his first. An easy trap for the hunter is to change and change and change and never finish a hunt. And- he’s not sure he quite believes it, but often errs on the side of caution- there is a tale of the hunter beat by the hunted, led in circles after tracks that always look more appealing until nature claimed him. A tricky hart who pressed his hooves deep into the earth, then walked more lightly, and crossed his own path. So the proud hunter endlessly switched to the deeper tracks, his greed keeping him in the never ending ring, and the animals gathering in the hedges around to laugh at him.

Crosstracks were full of stories. As the royal hunter, Grizzop had traveled far and been at plenty of feasts, where he’d heard them all. He believed in clever prey and the forest being full of creatures who would turn a hunt if they could. It wasn’t that he doubted the strength and ingenuity of the green. It was that, in all his experience and all he’d seen, he didn’t believe in the backbones of the stories themselves.

The stories always were a lesson. The hart’s ring punished the hunter’s pride. Another story spoke of a woman and her greed for power leading her to the fae, where she gained power but was cursed to serve the fairy court with it for all of eternity, so the power was never hers in the end. Punishing her greed. A story of a child who lied being carried off by ravens- punishing dishonesty. In the stories, people who did wrong were punished. The ending was always just and deserved.

Grizzop knows better. People never get what they deserve.

The spring days are still shorter than he likes, the sun soon to set, and decides to sleep on it. A literal phrase- he closes his eyes to rest directly on the intersection of the tracks.

When he wakes, he opens his eyes facing the new, deeper tracks. They belong to an elk. He follows them.

It’s quickly obvious that these new tracks are not going to be a normal hunt. He’s more familiar with the forest than he is his own face, and knows when it becomes strange to him.

But he can smell the wet fur of the elk, and the tracks promise a heavy animal to put on the end of his arrow, and he isn’t afraid of his pride putting him in a place of punishment.

So he’s caught completely off guard when he finally closes on the end of the trail and sees the elk.

It is just as massive as he’d hoped, it’s size rivaling the moose he’d hunted on a tour of the northernmost villages. Elk tend to have dark, rich fur on their head and neck, fading tawny and soft on their backs. This one is dark all over, a startling contrast to the brightness of its antlers.

The antlers of the elk are pure gold.

Grizzop is perfectly still as he takes this in.

Is he in a story? Is he to be punished for something?

The elk is attempting to climb a steep bit of ledge, moss parting to show peppery stone, and atop the ledge drapes a thick rhubarb plant, deep red and enticing, especially for so early in the season. Grizzop’s own mouth waters just looking at it, and he swallows.

The sound should be imperceptible, but the elk startles, slips on a bit of moss, and sinks to the knee in a gap in the rock.

The instant Grizzop knows he’s been perceived, his arms are up, his string is taught, his arrow set to fly.

“Wait!”

In shock, Grizzop does as the voice says. He waits.

“Please. Don’t shoot me.”

“I’ve never had a beast beg for it’s life before,” Grizzop replies, not releasing the tension in his bow as he moves closer, arrow still aimed.

“I’m not like a beast you’ve hunted before, I promise.”

Grizzop’s gaze flickers to the golden antlers. He counts sixteen points, and not a tangled mess of them either. Each branch of bone, or gold, or gold coated bone, is strong and decisively tapered.

“Obviously.”

“You have one arrow. If you shoot me with it, I won’t die, and I will kill you.”

“Yes you will, and no you won’t.”

The creature let out a breath. “Fine. How about a bribe? I can give you more than my flesh for you to cook and eat.”

“That’s right, you can give me gold. Or something like it. My kingdom could use a show of power and blessings or whatever, with a pair of golden antlers like that. We’ll be the most feared and respected around.”

“So you understand the ruling order and honor. How about this, then- I’m currently bringing honor and respect to my own kingdom. The kingdom that this forest belongs to. If you kill me, it will be the shame of my king and my people, and we will appear weak. I’m a symbol of strength and rarity. The king will be furious that his cloven lord was killed and eaten by mortals, and other kingdoms may attempt to encroach, sensing weakness. All because I slipped on some moss.”

“No, all because I’m the best hunter there is, and I’m better than you, and I got you, fairly and with my own skill. Not because of some moss,” Grizzop argues, half forgetting that he’s arguing with what should be a dumb animal.

“I- fine, yes, I concede. You bested me. Please, let me give you the reward you deserve, far more than the reward my dead body will present. Let me live, and you’ll be glad you did.”

“What can you offer me, cloven lord?” Grizzop asks dryly, sneering at the title.

“I will take you to my king, and he will give you a favor.”

“Hmm. Who’s your king?”

“The king of this forest. The Brass King.”

“.... Fae?”

“Yes.”

“Your antlers are gold, not brass.”

“Are you sure?” Grizzop glances at them again. Perhaps they are more reddish than he’d thought. His dreams had been full of tales like this, perhaps he’d assumed they were gold because it seemed more theatrical, and he’s clearly fallen into a story of his own.

That notion- of being in a story, of beginning his own story- makes his stomach lurch. He has everything he wants. Hunting is his, and he is the royal hunter to a perfect queen, in a magnificent kingdom. Why is he in a story? He has nothing else he needs, nothing to change. His pride can be punished, if he believed in such a thing, but- this story doesn't seem to be about his own punishment. Rather- a reward. Maybe a punishment for the pride of the elk or something.

Brass antlers are far less valuable than gold.

“Make it three favors.”

“I hardly think-”

“You’re in no position to argue. If you say no, I’ll kill you.”

The elk stares at him with it’s liquid eyes, and he stares back, body and bowstring still taut. He refuses to blink at the alien intelligence in the cloven lord’s eyes.

It inclines it’s head, still beast enough despite it’s sentience to show deference in animal gestures. “Three favors. Let me free my leg, and then you may climb on.”

“I’ve never rode an elk before.”

“You won’t be able to walk to my kingdom. Not in that it’s too far, but the steps of a mortal don’t lead to the kingdom of the fae. I imagine a hunter of your skill to be perfectly capable of managing to ride me.”

Grizzop raises a brow, but says nothing, and allows the elk to step carefully from the hole it had sunk in. He keeps his bow up and taut.

The massive elk steps to him, and sinks down to something like a bow so it’s shoulders are low enough for Grizzop to climb on.

It’s only after he’s on and the elk stands that he has to release his bow and put his arrow back in his empty quiver to grasp the thick fur on the beast’s neck and hold on.

And then he realizes maybe he could be punished after all. He’s just mounted a quick talking elk, trusting it to take him to his three favors. The elk might jump into the sky and buck him off a cliff, or crush him against a tree, or charge into the sea and he’ll die of drowning after all, despite everything. It’s what he deserves, probably.

It does none of these things, and he can feel the forest grow deeper and richer as it canters toward this brass kingdom.

Grizzop begins to wonder what he could ask for, for his favors, and the concept of getting what you deserve sits in the back of his mouth like a sweet, coating his tongue and making his lips curl.

Perhaps his story can have a theme of justice after all. He needs nothing- his life is full and whole- but he knows of others who do.

* * *

A/N: Writing in present tense is my absolute achilles heel (and my achilles is a piece of shit, ask my PT, it's been threatening to rip for YEARS) and I'm plowing ahead unbeta'd because I'm an idiot. If you see any typos, changes in tense, or something that makes no sense, feel free to give me a shout, I promise I won't be mad.


	2. Second: The Greenman

**Second: The Greenman**

Grizzop had known the forest he’d entered was strange, but now he knows he is somewhere fully new and foreign to him. He knows he should be fearful and cautious. He could get lost or be abandoned or trapped.

But he doesn’t want the elk to smell his fear, and beyond that- he’s not sure he feels fear. Only curiosity and excitement. This is an opportunity to really help his kingdom. He goes over the particulars of wording in his head as the elk carries him into a forest so thick and rich, the very air makes his eyes sting, but he resists even blinking, afraid to lose the vision before him, because it feels fragile and dreamlike.

They began the journey in a green and brown wood of mud and ferns, and the ferns have become a carpet of yellow and orange.

The fae court he’s entered- it can’t be anything but a fae court- is autumnal in aspect.

The pines are all but gone now, as well as the other greens. They are walking through a wood of oak and maple, with clusters of birch here and there, all wearing their finest fall colors. But it isn’t cold. It’s the last grasping fingers of summer, when autumn has fully claimed the land but there’s one last surge of searing heat. He feels the sun, scorching and stained yellow through the leaves above, but it’s clearly not midsummer. It lacks humidity. It’s dry, even, dry as the frozen winter earth. Grizzop wants for his water, but feels a bit like the hare frozen at the other end of a crossbow, seeing something it does not understand and doesn’t know whether to fear or admire the sight.

Grizzop can’t help but be confused by the change in seasons- stepping from spring to fall tends that- but beyond that, the autumn itself isn’t…. right.

Beneath the musk of rotting foliage is another layer of unreality that Grizzop can’t quite wrap his mind around. Crossing seasons is strange indeed, but he can understand it. He knows fall.

This fall doesn’t seem to know itself.

He looks down and expects the leaves shifted and crunched beneath the cloven lord’s steps to reveal sand, because the sun is too hot, too dry, and there’s the faintest salinity in the air. Not oceanic. This salt does not know water. But beneath the sunbaked leaves are just more leaves, damp in their layers, and Grizzop looks away, unsettled.

The trees grow larger. So large that Grizzop feels like a toy, a child, an ant. The space beneath the trees opens up into a massive area, and this is unmistakable as the court. He looks down from the ceiling of ochre and there it is. There are people, here and there. Carts of food, pavilions, tarps. He purposefully doesn’t look too close at the people. It’s his first time amongst fae, and he doesn’t know which tales are true and which are false, and he wants to survive this. He needs to survive this.

He hasn’t spoken to the elk since they began, and Grizzop’s mouth is dry. “Anything I should know about how to behave? This is my first venture to a fae court and I don’t want to have to spend one of my favors on ‘please don’t kill me’ because I’ve done something wrong.”

“ _ You _ bested  _ me _ , and now you ask my advice?” Grizzop plucks a single vibrating note from his bow, still strung, and the elk snorts, a startlingly animal sound. “Just treat him as you would your king.”

“I grew up throwing knives and practice brawling with my Queen. I don’t think a punch in the shoulder is the right greeting for yours.”

“You’d be surprised. The Brass King is young, and… friendly.”

The elk remains respectful in tone and doesn’t elaborate, but there’s a stiffness to the respect. Grizzop reaches for his water after all, wanting to be fully prepared and in optimal speaking condition. He’s the hunter, not an advisor, but he’s acted as representative to his kingdom enough that he can put on airs if he needs, and can hold his own in fancy overblown political situations, for the most part. The things unsaid about the Brass King make him worry he’s in over his head.

At the far end of the enormous open area, the court of trees, they stop at the opening of an enormous hedge. It’s green, the first green foliage Grizzop has seen since entering the fae land, but a stubby, rugged, dry green that probably never changed color, like scrubby brush on a stone mountaintop, or on a dusty windblown plane-

Or the edge of a desert oasis.

Grizzop had only seen the desert once, when he was very young and still training, and hadn’t recognized the smell until now. But that’s what it is, the salt he can taste in every breath, the dry unblinking sun. Strange. It’s as if the forest had been forced to become as close to a desert as it could while still being a forest. Perhaps that was the strain in the elk’s tone- a cold woods creature discordant with the desert undercurrent.

Grizzop wonders if every fae court is this peculiar, the strange combining of ideas and environments that should never exist at once.

A pair of tall, human-looking guards look at Grizzop questioningly, but let them enter the hedge. On the other side is the actual king’s court, and the presence of the desert is potent here. The ground is covered in massive beautiful carpets, the trees around hung with tapestries, and a sandstone throne stands at the end of the court. The seat is empty, but someone is at a table to the side, speaking to a tall person with tusks and tiny glasses perched improbably on his strong nose.

“Your highness.” The elk speaks, dipping to bow. Grizzop takes the opportunity to jump down and give a bow of his own, though not so low, and not taking his eyes off the king. He hopes he’s not the type of king who abhors being gazed at directly.

The king- Grizzop isn’t sure how he knows he is the king. He isn’t wearing a crown, and is finely dressed, sure, but no more than many of the folk he’d seen outside. Still, Grizzop is sure without a doubt that this is the king, the same way he knows which way is up and what time of day it is.

The Brass King does not wear brass, but when Grizzop blinks, the inside of his eyelids are stained with a metallic glow, like he’s looked directly at the sun. The king’s olive skin is smooth and soft, normal flesh that could belong to a mortal, and he wears his eyes with fashionable dark outlines. Those eyes are brown, which for some reason, surprises Grizzop. He expected… something else. Sharper. Scaled, even. It’s like tracking a boar to a cave, seeing the bones at the mouth and gouged trees around and coarse fur stuck in the brambles, smelling gore and muscle, looking into the cave, and seeing a fawn instead.

Grizzop hasn’t even seen bones and gouges and fur here, though. So why does he find himself expecting the boar?

Everything about the fae land seems to perverse what he knows of nature and stymie his instincts. He’s never wrong about a hunt, yet the creature before him does not match the tracks he feels, and thinking back, he wonders why he senses tracks at all, when his eyes never set upon them.

“Who have you brought me, Cloven Lord?” His voice is high and friendly, and he smiles invitingly, after gently dismissing the tusked man. Grizzop appreciates that he keeps his lips closed with his smile- he doesn’t think he can stomach seeing the flat harmless teeth when every bit of his intuition screams they must be sharp.

His olive skin is clearly from the same desert that lives beneath the visage of woods, but olive is the second description that comes to Grizzop’s mind, not the first.

The Cloven Lord bows again to the Brass King, his antlers catching the light, and tells the king he owes this hunter a favor, and Grizzop reminds himself,  _ this is real, this is real _ .

“We agreed on three,” he says, and then glances back at the king. Rather than looking irate or offended, the king looks mirthful.

“I will keep the Cloven Lord’s word, if you earned it,” the king says to Grizzop.

“I hunted your elk and had him at the end of my arrow. He begged for his life and I made a deal with him.”

“A life?  _ A _ life. That sounds like one favor.”

“Sure, but this particular threat was worth more than a single life. Way I figure, there’s three things I traded, so three favors are what I should get. His life is just the first I’m trading. The second is the honor I would’ve brought to my kingdom if I returned with his body as a prize- all that game, all those points, and made of precious metal, even.”

The king nods, tapping purple painted nails on his chin. He has no beard, not a shadow of hair on his face, but the backs of his fingers have a fuzz of hair, paler than the black of the hair on his head, his brows, his lashes. “Fair. And the third?”

“The honor of your own kingdom. I’m giving it back. If I’d killed your elk, your Cloven Lord, you would have been shamed, made weak, probably put under threat if it appeared that a mortal could take from you. I can’t imagine the fae kingdoms are different in that way from the mortal kingdoms. People would take notice, in a bad way."

At that, even his companion, the man with the tusks, looks impressed, and Grizzop knows those favors are his.

“Well done. You’re wasted as a mere hunter, if you can puzzle all that out and extract so much meaning and favor from the mere act of not killing an elk.” His eyes shift to the elk, who’s kept his head low in what looked like shame. “Don’t guilt yourself, Cloven Lord. This is a worthy opponent to lose to. I don’t doubt your abilities, I only elevate the abilities of this hunter.” He looks back to Grizzop. “Will you dine with me? I feel that we have much to learn from each other, and I’d like to talk about these favors.”

Grizzop chews the inside of his lip fretfully. “I… I don’t want to offend, Brass King, but… I haven’t experienced fae before, and I don’t want to eat your food and get trapped here. I mean- this place is great and all. Real nice. But I have my own life, my own kingdom, and I want to return to it.”

“Oh! Of course! This isn’t a trap, I promise- there, you know the power of a fae promise isn’t just a story.” His voice is warm, earnest, high with youth and kindness. And he’s not a large creature. Frankly, he’s built like a doll, round eyes set wide on a welcoming face, underheight but proportioned well, face unlined, mouth expressive. 

Grizzop nods- he isn’t sure what about their people is true and false, but he does know that one is undoubtedly true. 

The Brass King continues to reassure him. “Well, the food I’d share with you won’t trap you here. There are things you can consume from our lands that will trap you here, but I won’t feed you that. I’d like to be your friend, if I’m honest, and you seem like someone who appreciates honesty.”

The king wants to be his friend. Maybe Grizzop has truly stepped out of reality. “Fine.”

“Should I call you the Royal Hunt, or do you have a name? That's another myth- mostly. Names have power, but I'm not asking for the whole name of your full self. Just what to call you by."

Grizzop holds out a hand on instinct, then nearly pulls it back, suddenly unsure if that’s okay. “Grizzop.”

The Brass King shakes his hand, and the heat of his touch scorches Grizzop’s palm and the pads of his fingers. 

It's painful. It's also soothing. An assurance that his intuition isn’t false, and there’s more to fae than his other senses can detect. The confusion and tide of wrong abates to a more tolerable level as he understands this and shakes off the doubt. All his life as a hunter and he’d never had reason to doubt his instinct, and he’s relieved that he doesn’t need to start now.

When he looks at his hand, it's visibly unharmed, and the pain is gone with the contact with the Brass King, but he now knows better than to trust his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the Wildwood tarot, The Emperor is replaced with The Greenman. His element is fire and is associated with conviction, lawfulness, confidence. Inverted, he is also associated with immaturity.
> 
> When steel rusts, the iron in creates iron oxide and goes red. When brass rusts, the copper in creates copper oxide and goes green.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wicked datemate for being all "ehehe what if I name my jellycat after whatever character dies hmm?" and then that happened, and then other ideas happened, and then this happened.


End file.
